Click to reveal the photo that inspired the painting.

"We might say a painting is a world; a photograph is of the world" (Stanley Cavell, Philosophy's Recounting of the Ordinary, 1999).

From Die Muskete, 1918.

"Feel it?"  A detail from Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1934.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

From Punch, 1878.

Here's the crinoline monster from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1876.

Even if the Loch Ness Monster is an automaton, as Ure's Dictionary of 1846 suggests, "Does it then follow that the automaton possesses a freedom of action, a freedom of will?  Yes, we should think that it has a certain freedom of action (the freedom of will we had better leave aside because here the analogy is doubtful at present)" (I. G. Makarov, Cybernetics Today, 1984).

"All sorts of things coming my way now.  Aren't you glad[?]"  From 1905.

From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1879.

From Twenty-two Goblins by Arthur W. Rider, 1917.

Here's a giant spider crab from Japan, featured in The American Museum Journal, 1904.

From Die Muskete, 1919.